2 days ago
Russia is quietly churning out fake content posing as US news
McKenzie Sadeghi, AI and foreign influence editor at NewsGuard, said in an interview that since early 2024, the group has been publishing 'pro-Kremlin content en masse in the form of videos' mimicking these organizations.
'If even just one or a few of their fake videos go viral per year, that makes all of the other videos worth it,' she said.
While online Russian influence operations have existed for many years, security experts say artificial intelligence is making it harder for people to discern what's real.
Storm-1679 developed a distinct technique in 2024 for combining videos with AI-generated audio impersonations of celebrity and expert voices, according to Microsoft's Threat Analysis Center.
One high-profile example of this tactic surfaced ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics and included a fake documentary series featuring Netflix's logo and an AI-generated deepfake voice of actor Tom Cruise as the narrator. And in December 2024, the group used these tools to generate fake videos impersonating trusted sources like journalists, professors and law enforcement to sow seeds of distrust toward NATO member countries and Ukraine.
'They are just throwing spaghetti, trying to see what's going to stick on a wall,' said Ivana Stradner, a researcher on Russia at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank.
Sadeghi said that 'timing and the news cycle' — events like elections, sporting events or wars — play a big role in Storm-1679's operations. 'It typically tends to surge and launch a wave of fakes around a particular news event,' she said.
And while the majority of these videos rarely gain traction and are quickly debunked, the content occasionally takes off. The group was behind a fabricated E! News video in February that claimed the U.S. Agency for International Development paid for celebrities to visit Ukraine after Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
